Write up of the Bolivian Day Parade in Jersey City

Yesterday the Bolivian Independence Day Parade took place in Jersey City, and some members of Amigos de Bolivia crossed the Hudson to check it out.  One was so impressed he took the time to learn to take pictures with his smart phone, and in an hour had amassed 200, which we plan to put up as soon as we learn to transfer from phone to blog...and believe me, you will see a wealth of colour like no carnival, so next time you think of going to Rio, just wait till August and take the PATH train to Jersey City.


There were dozens of bands each with dancers in elaborate native costume, Andean rythms vibrating from Uhauls all the way from Hamilton Park to City Hall. Many of these groups had come from other states, including New York and Virginia, where small enclaves of the Bolivian community exist almost unnoticed by America as a whole.


Bolivians tend to work hard and not get into trouble, most are very family oriented and so the Bolivian community keeps together, flying under the radar screen; few people even remember that Jaime Escalante and Raquel Welch were Bolivians. It could be a suggestion to promote more culture and tourism at the parades, Bolivia is a country with little crime and great wildlife from harpy eagles to orchids, and a whole range of products that it exports without getting the proper credit for (Brazil nuts, for instance, come mostly from Bolivia, not Brazil...).


The parade was enjoyable, but sadly at the end there were no cookouts with seviche and parillas as there have been in previous years. Also absent were any tables selling any CDs of the music, so I noted some of the bands and will be contacting them soon to buy CDs etc.


Today in Manhattan there is another parade, one which I passed on the way to the library midtown, and while it has many more adherents, it will in no way come near what we saw in Jersey. But hopefully we will not have to cross the river to see it; Manhattan is host to a great number of parades and it would benefit greatly from having a Bolivian parade in the future, along, with I hope, la comida boliviana.


VIVA BOLIVIA!

Revolution and Education in Bolivia

In New York, Amigos de Bolivia members have been gearing up for events later in the year to promote their favourite Andean state. It has been a topic of discussion also at New York University, where CLACS, the Center for Latin American and Carribbean Studies has been sponsoring lectures by visiting professors, presented by Sinclair Thomson and Carmen Medeiros of NYU.
But wait a minute, is this not the alma mater of one Jose Brechner, that ex-politician whose shrill rants against the mestizos (the indigenous population) and the collas in particular (the Aymara and Quechua) make him sound like the Fuhrer on a bad day? Most people outside of Bolivia have never heard of this clown, though he writes for a number of large dailies including Ha'aretz (maybe they need token nazi). His reputation, however, is not much bigger even in his own backyard, no matter how much he pisses in it with his rants. At the latest events, neither Marisol de le Cadena nor Bret Gustafson had heard of him. Brechner's stomping ground is the right wing Santa Cruz, which also happens to be Gustafon's residence these days.
But, moving on from the likes of Herr Brechner, of whom Melvyn Kohn writes more on the Jewish Chronicle site, let me throw a more positive light on the work of de la Cadena and Gustafson; the former is based in Davis, where she teaches at University of California, and the latter in St. Louis (when not in Santa Cruz) - where he teaches at the University of Washington. The UC instructor gave a talk on 29 March titled "Indigenous Politics: Beyond politics as usual", in which she held forth on the ontological pluralisation of politics in regards to the conjuring of non-human beings, i.e. mountains, water, soil, etc., as beings to be regarded in the making of laws, mostly in regards to mining. She being a Peruvian, this had more to do with Peru than Bolivia, but touched on both. Gustafon's speech, titled "Epistemic Rupture, Affirmative Action or 'Reverse Racism'?: Decolonizing Knowledge in Evo's Bolivia", was almost entirely limited to Bolivia, with a focus on the province of Santa Cruz, the large and wealthy southeast departamento. He is the author of New Languages of the State: Indigenous Resurgence and the Politics of Knowledge in Bolivia (Duke, 2009) and is presently working with Niki Fabricant on Remapping Bolivia: Territory and Resources in a Plurinational State.

His talk included much of his own memories of education in Bolivia, starting with the policies of the mid-'90s, the heyday of neo-liberalism under Losada; these for some reason were backed by the World Bank, and some say it was with the intention of weakening the teachers' union. The more recent talks about education reform entail what Gustafson calls a "distinct shift from the neo-liberal period", adding that the "neo-liberalism of the '90s saw indigenous language as a problem to be addressed." The present movement has attracted "violent right-wing opposition", he notes, to the surprise of no one familiar with the situation. Some of the proposed changes in education include the teaching not only of indigenous languages, but of local rituals as well - such as the uta chana - a ceremony for homebuilding/starting a new family.

Education ministers have tended to move at a speed reminiscent of the Blair government in the UK - MAS is onto its fourth. The first was Felix Patzi, who was virulently anti-ecclesiastical, and is now doing jail time, or penance if you will, for drunk driving - a crime Morales has cracked down to the protests of drunk drivers. However ridiculous that sounds, that is exactly what happened - there were road blocks and other forms of protests against the new laws designed to improve road safety - and needless to say the protestors were not in favour; MADD would certainly have loved MAS that day. Most of Bolivia certainly did and told the drunks to shut up and get out of the way.
Patzi's successor was from the teachers' union, who in turn was succeeded by one of the leading Catholics, who in turn was succeeded by a criollo who some call an elitist, Roberto Aguilar; so not only have the faces changed in this ministry, but so have the outlooks and backgrounds of the head educators. The Catholic Church is not the only religious entity in Bolivia to have some influence on education, there has been a steady flow of Protestant missionaries, and these founded the Summer Institute of Linguistics back in the '50s or '60s. Many chefs in the kitchen, much simmering debate, and some real hotheads screaming that Morales is making a "pact between the devil and Fidel Castro to take over Bolivian children." Western journalists, often lacking insight into the minutae (how many of them bother to travel to the country?), labeled the whole thing as affirmative action, and indeed when Morales opened three new schools for the indigenous in their municipalities, many expected them to be lefty campuses full of Trotskyites and hippies; no such luck, they were all technical schools featuring nuts and bolts courses on veterinary medicine, improved crop yields and gas drilling.
Gustafson pointed out that Morales is not acting as a left wing extremist at all, but even looks a bit conservative at times; we hear more recycled factoids by journalists who cut and paste from the fax machine, as Guardian journalists Nick Davies explained in his 2009 book Flat Earth News; click here for a review and excerpts. So this is not a country turning into a radical revolutionary experiment; nor are there murderous Indians running around extracting vengeance on the criollos. Brechner take note - there is evidence of a peaceful change, and not a lot of separatism as was expected. Out of 315 municipal areas where a referendum for autonomy was put forward or could have been, only 10 voted for it; two of them in Santa Cruz. Gustafson remarked: "We don't see emerging radical ethno-territoriality of the state...what we see are fragmented differences."Of the problems in Santa Cruz it was noted in the round table discussion that the violence that we are heaing about is not necessarily new there, it is just being brought into the public discourse at this time. Included in any discourse on violence in that departamento would be the plot to assassinate Morales, which Gustafson, perhaps in deference to certain copies of an AP report which cast doubt on the government story, noted as "alleged." Conspiracy theories abounded but were soon debunked, as the plotters had gone so far as to make a video tape of themselves discussing such activities - but rather than enter at large upon this here, Melvyn Kohn's essay on Harry's Place will give the inquisitive some facts; and I might add that there is yet more to the story that Kohn is holding back at this time.
Physical assassins were followed by character assassins; the twain often meet up, especially where there is a prize to steal, and I am referring to resources - Merrill Lynch called Bolivia the "Saudi Arabia of Lithium", and that metal is not the only one under the surface of Bolivia's soil; gold, silver, uranium, zinc, tin, iron, and many others. External conflict related to it all is to be expected, but there are internal conflicts as well, as opposition to mining exists in some of the very indigenous groups that put MAS in office. Morales is holding up well with this, balancing environmentalism and local spirituality with the reality of having to feed some 10 million people. The president at one point drew the line and told some that they could not stand in the way of the good of the nation. This week Bolivia is hosting an international summit on the environment to be held on Earth Day, and Gustafson notes that James Cameron is already in Cochabamba. Forgive me for a note of cynicism here, but I expect lots of grandstanding from rich movie star types and not sure they will make any lasting contribution. That has to come from the Bolivians and their committed allies; lots of limelight grabbers will hug trees, but their hypocrisy is easily seen when they admit they can't be bothered to wear one thread of hemp. They wear cotton and write on tree pulp paper - destroying entire forests to get their names into magazines and newspapers for this or that, and going green is the latest way to get attention. Hopefully their time spent in Bolivia will humble them and they will take away some reality to bring back to the world of virtual non-reality we call the West.
So we shall see. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk greatly improved Turkey in the 1920s with his education reform - so much so that a friend of mine spent one year in school there and was put three years ahead in a New York school - and the same seems to be happening in Bolivia, which, it might be recalled, is noted for having already produced 'America's best teacher', the late Jaime Escalante. There is a lot to learn here and I expect it to be good.

The passing of Jaime Escalante

The noted Bolivian math teacher Jaime Escalante died yesterday. The following is his obituary in the LA Times.

Jaime Escalante, the charismatic former East Los Angeles high school teacher who taught the nation that inner-city students could master subjects as demanding as calculus, died Tuesday. He was 79.
The subject of the 1988 box-office hit "Stand and Deliver," Escalante died at his son's home in Roseville, in northern California, said actor Edward James Olmos, who portrayed the teacher in the film. Escalante had bladder cancer.
"Jaime didn't just teach math. Like all great teachers, he changed lives," Olmos said earlier this month when he organized an appeal for funds to help pay Escalante's mounting medical bills.

Escalante gained national prominence in the aftermath of a 1982 scandal surrounding 14 of his Garfield High School students who passed the strenuous Advanced Placement calculus exam only to be accused later of cheating.
The story of their eventual triumph - and of Escalante's battle to raise standards at a struggling campus of working-class, largely Mexican American students - became the subject of the movie, which turned the balding, middle-aged Bolivian immigrant into the most famous teacher in America.
Escalante was a maverick who did not get along with many of his public school colleagues, but he mesmerized students with his entertaining style and deep understanding of math. Educators came from around the country to observe him at Garfield, which built one of the largest and most successful Advanced Placement programs in the nation.
"Jaime Escalante has left a deep and enduring legacy in the struggle for academic equity in American education," said Gaston Caperton, former West Virginia governor and president of the College Board, which sponsors the Scholastic Assessment Test and the AP exam.
"His passionate belief (was) that all students, when properly prepared and motivated, can succeed at academically demanding coursework, no matter what their racial, social or economic background. Because of him, educators everywhere have been forced to revise long-held notions of who can succeed."
Escalante's rise came during an era decried by experts as one of alarming mediocrity in the nation's schools. He pushed for tougher standards and accountability for students and educators, often nettling colleagues and parents along the way with his brusque manner and uncompromising stands.
He was called a traitor for his opposition to bilingual education. He said the hate mail he received for championing Proposition 227, the successful 1997 ballot measure to dismantle bilingual programs in California, was a factor in his decision to retire in 1998 after leaving Garfield and teaching at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento for seven years.
He moved back to Bolivia, where he propelled himself into a classroom again, apparently intent on fulfilling a vow to die doing what he knew best - teach. But he returned frequently to the United States to speak to education groups and continued to ally himself with conservative politics. He considered becoming an education adviser to President George W. Bush and in 2003 signed on as an education consultant for Arnold Schwarzenegger's California gubernatorial campaign.
Escalante was born Dec. 31, 1930, in La Paz, Bolivia, and was raised by his mother after his parents, both schoolteachers, broke up when he was about 9. He attended a well-regarded Jesuit high school, San Calixto, where his quick mind and penchant for mischief often got him into trouble.
After high school he served in the army during a short-lived Bolivian rebellion. Although he had toyed with the idea of engineering school in Argentina, he wound up enrolling at the state teachers college, Normal Superior. Before he graduated he was teaching at three top-rated Bolivian schools. He also married Fabiola Tapia, a fellow student at the college.
At his wife's urging, Escalante gave up his teaching posts for the promise of a brighter future in America for their firstborn, Jaime Jr. (A second son, Fernando, would follow.) With $3,000 in his pocket and little more than "yes" and "no" in his English vocabulary, Escalante flew alone to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, 1963.
His first job was mopping floors in a coffee shop across the street from Pasadena City College, where he enrolled in English classes. Within a few months he was promoted to cook, slinging burgers by day and studying for an associate's degree in math and physics by night. That led to a better-paying job as a technician at a Pasadena electronics company, where he became a prized employee. But the classroom still beckoned to the teacher inside him. He earned a scholarship to California State University, Los Angeles. to pursue a teaching credential. In the fall of 1974, when he was 43, he took a pay cut to begin teaching at Garfield High for $13,000 a year.
"My friends said, 'Jaime, you're crazy.' But I wanted to work with young people," he told the Los Angeles Times. "That's more rewarding for me than the money."
When he arrived at the school, he was dismayed to learn he had been assigned to teach the lowest level of math. He grew unhappier still when he discovered how watered-down the math textbooks were - on a par with fifth-grade work in Bolivia. Faced with unruly students, he began to wish for his old job back.
But Escalante stayed, soon developing a reputation for turning around hard-to-motivate students. By 1978, he had 14 students enrolled in his first AP calculus class. Of the five who survived his stiff homework and attendance demands, only two earned passing scores on the exam.
But in 1980, seven of nine students passed the exam; in 1981, 14 of 15 passed.
In 1982, he had 18 students to prepare for the academic challenge of their young lives.
At his insistence, they studied before school, after school and on Saturdays, with Escalante as coach and cheerleader. Some of them lacked supportive parents, who needed their teenagers to work to help pay bills. Other students had to be persuaded to spend less time on the school band or in athletics. Yet all gradually formed an attachment to calculus and to "Kimo," their nickname for Escalante, inspired by Tonto's nickname for the Lone Ranger, Kemo Sabe.
Escalante was hospitalized twice in the months leading up to the AP exam. He had a heart attack while teaching night school but ignored doctors' orders to rest and was back at Garfield the next day.
Then he disappeared one weekend to have his gallbladder removed. As Washington Post reporter Jay Mathews recounted in his 1988 book, "Escalante: The Best Teacher in America," the hard-driving teacher turned the health problem into another weapon in his bag of tricks. "You burros give me a heart attack," he repeatedly told his students when he returned. "But I come back! I'm still the champ."
The guilt-making mantra was effective. One student said, "If Kimo can do it, we can do it. If he wants to teach us that bad, we can learn."
The Advanced Placement program qualifies students for college credit if they pass the exam with a score of 3 or higher. For many years it was a tool of the elite; the calculus exam, for example, was taken by only about 3 percent of American high school math students when Escalante revived the program at Garfield in the late 1970s.
In 1982, a record 69 Garfield students were taking AP exams in various subjects, including Spanish and history. Escalante's calculus students took their exam in May under the watchful eye of the school's head counselor.
The results, released over the summer, were stunning: All 18 of his students passed, with seven earning the highest score of 5.
But the good news quickly turned bad.
The Educational Testing Service, which administers the exam, said it had found suspicious similarities in the solutions given on 14 exams. It invalidated those scores.
The action angered the students, who thought ETS would not have questioned their scores if they were white. But this was Garfield, a school made up primarily of lower-income Mexican Americans that only a few years earlier had nearly lost its accreditation.
Escalante, like many in the Garfield community, feared the students were victims of a racist attack, a charge that ETS strongly denied. Two of the students told Mathews of the Post that some cheating had occurred, but they later recanted their confessions.
Vindication came in a retest. Of the 14 accused of wrongdoing, 12 took the exam again and passed.
After that, the numbers of Garfield students taking calculus and other Advanced Placement classes soared. By 1987, only four high schools in the country had more students taking and passing the AP calculus exam than Garfield.
Escalante's dramatic success raised public consciousness of what it took to be not just a good teacher but a great one. One of the most astute analyses of his classroom style came from the actor who shadowed him for days before portraying him in "Stand and Deliver."
"He's the most stylized man I've ever come across," Olmos, who received an Oscar nomination for his performance, told The New York Times in 1988. "He had three basic personalities - teacher, father-friend and street-gang equal - and he would juggle them, shift in an instant. ... He's one of the greatest calculated entertainers."
Escalante was the ultimate performer in class, cracking jokes, rendering impressions and using all sorts of props - from basketballs and wind-up toys to meat cleavers and space-alien dolls - to explain complex mathematical concepts.
In 1991, Escalante packed up his bag of tricks and quit Garfield, saying he was fed up with faculty politics and petty jealousies. He headed to Hiram Johnson High with the intention of testing his methods in a new environment.
But in seven years there, he never had more than about 14 calculus students a year and a 75 percent pass rate, a record he blamed on administrative turnover and cultural differences.
Thirty-five years after leaving Bolivia for his journey into teaching fame, Escalante went home. He settled with his wife in her hometown of Cochabamba and became a part-time mathematics professor at the Universidad del Valle, and was still teaching calculus in Bolivia in 2008. He returned to the U.S. frequently to visit his son and give motivational speeches.
He made his last trip here to seek treatment for the cancer that had left him unable to walk or speak above a whisper. In March, as he gave himself over to a Reno, Nev., clinic's regimen of pills, teas and ointments, many of his former students gathered at Garfield to raise money.
Unpopular with fellow teachers, he won few major teaching awards in the U.S. He liked to be judged by his results, a concept still resisted by the majority of his profession.
As he faced death, it was still the results that mattered to him - the young minds he held captive three decades ago who today are engineers, lawyers, doctors, teachers and administrators.
"I had many opportunities in this country, but the best I found in East L.A.," he said in one of his last interviews. "I am proudest of my brilliant students." Read more: http://www.thestate.com/2010/03/30/1223172/jaime-escalante-teacher-who-was.html#ixzz0jneqZDaL